Township program teaches kids about dirty socks and bugs

Roger Varley, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A small group of school-age children learn about the Uxbridge Brook during “The Brook Never Sleeps” day last Friday. Photo by John Cavers

Do you know what a decapoda is? How about a lesser covert? What about a gall?

A group of Uxbridge youth found the answers to these questions last Friday when they took part in the Brook Never Sleeps program, put on by the township's environmental and sustainability committee during a school PA day. Broken up into groups, the children travelled to four stations in and around the township offices where they learned about aquatic insects, how to cast when fly fishing and how life goes on around the stream all year long.

While participating in a nature scavenger hunt along the banks of the Uxbridge Brook, the participants wore white sports socks over their boots and shoes. At the end of the session, the socks - covered in mud and debris - were taken off and placed in Ziploc bags. The children were asked to take the bags home, place them in a sunny window and observe what grows from the socks. Later in the day, the youngsters had close encounters with live turtles brought in from Scales Nature Park in Orillia.

Christine MacKenzie, the organizer, said about 40 children signed up for the free program, which is aimed at exposing children to the natural environment. The Brook Never Sleeps was held previously in March, during the March break, but MacKenzie said that time of year often saw the ground covered in snow, so the decision was made to move it to November.

Midway through the day, the youngsters assembled in the council chambers for healthy snacks and several boxes of pizza before resuming the program.

To answer the questions posed earlier: at a station set up by Ontario Streams, a charity that rehabilitates streams and brooks, the children used magnifying glasses to examine a host of tiny, squirming bugs taken from the stream. One, which resembled a tiny crayfish, was called a decapoda. At a session on birds, they learned that a lesser covert is a type of feather. In the nature scavenger hunt, they learned that a gall is a type of growth found on plants, usually round like a ball and containing a grub.